Due to the purposes for which they are employed, medical appliances such as those for high frequency (HF) surgery, are subject to high demands regarding their reliability during use and regarding possible methods of cleaning and in particular disinfecting them. Appliances with an adjustment apparatus, for example to change settings so that they can operate in various modes or to make other desired adjustments, can often not be adequately cleaned because of the way the control elements (such as, e.g., knobs, sliders or similar input devices) are constructed. On one hand, the input devices themselves may incorporate inaccessible places, and on the other hand because of the way they are positioned on the medical appliance they interfere with access to other parts of the appliance that need cleaning. Furthermore, the various kinds of adjustment apparatuses used in known medical appliances are constructed such that contaminants from the surroundings are able to penetrate the interior of the appliance. This can occur, for example, when the input device accessible from the exterior is connected by a shaft or similar connecting element to a controllable and/or regulatable device in the interior of the appliance. Insufficiently cleaned appliances present a source of danger to the patients' health. In addition, the functionality of the appliance can be impaired by contaminants.
To avoid the intrusion of contaminants, conventional appliances often include sealed connecting elements, which are intended to prevent liquids or other germ-containing substances from entering. However, a completely tight seal cannot be provided in this way.
The document EP 0 858 293 B1 discloses a magnetic switching element for actuating a surgical device. A handpiece for motor-driven surgical systems is provided in which switches are fixed to the outside of a housing and physically isolated from the “interior” of the handpiece. This isolation ensures that the switches provide no leakage path such as described above, to electronics situated within the handpiece. The surgical device is activated and/or inactivated by way of the switches, which in this case cooperate with a Hall-effect sensor disposed in the interior of the handpiece. In this process, a permanent magnet disposed in each of the switches generates a magnetic field that, when the switches are actuated, is coupled to the sensor and/or decoupled from it and thus brings about operation of the surgical system.
In this system the penetration of contaminants into the interior of the device, in this case the handpiece, is indeed prevented, but an elaborate construction is required for the interaction between switch and sensor. Furthermore, the problem of inadequate cleanability of the switches and their surroundings still remains.
The objective of the disclosed embodiments is thus to develop a medical appliance in such a way that cleaning of a medical appliance equipped with an adjustment apparatus can be done in the simplest possible way, while simultaneously keeping the structure and manner of function of the device likewise as simple as possible.